Referring to FIG. 1, shown therein is the upper extremity of the humerus 10 which generally includes a humeral head 12, a greater tuberosity 14, a lesser tuberosity 16, and a humeral shaft 18. Referring to FIG. 2, in a traumatic accident or other traumatic events, the upper extremity of the humerus 10 may break into several fragments along multiple fracture lines, with the humeral head 12 separating along a fracture line F1 at or near the anatomical neck, the greater tuberosity 14 separating from the lesser tuberosity 16 along a fracture line F2 at or near the biciptal groove, and/or the humeral shaft 18 separating along a fracture line F3 at or near the surgical neck. The resulting fracture is generally referred to as a “four-part humeral fracture”. Attached to the displaced tuberosity fragments are muscles and tendons of the rotator cuff (not shown), namely the subscapularius, supraspinatous, infraspinatous, and teres minor.
When the humeral head fragment is significantly displaced or damaged, the surgeon may choose to repair this type of fracture by replacing the anatomical humeral head 12 with a hemispherical prosthesis head attached to a prosthesis stem which is in turn anchored within the humeral shaft 18. The remaining fragments, namely the greater and lesser tuberosity fragments 14, 16, are reduced about the prosthesis body and under the hemispherical prosthesis head. The greater and lesser tuberosity fragments 14, 16 are typically held in place via sutures. Conventional shoulder prostheses may be provided with suture openings for threading sutures therethrough to tie the tuberosity fragments 14, 16 to the humeral shaft 18 and/or to one another. Alternatively, the sutures can be attached directly to the tuberosity fragments 14, 16 and/or to the humeral shaft 18. However, current methods for attaching sutures to prosthetic devices and and/or bone fragments can be tedious and time-consuming, and generally add to the overall length and complexity of the surgical procedure.
Thus, there remains a need to provide an improved orthopedic prosthesis including suture anchor features configured to selectively attach sutures to one or more regions of the prosthesis. The present invention satisfies this need and provides other benefits and advantages in a novel and unobvious manner.